Prodigal Sandwich

Years ago, in my most exuberant days of discovering the joys of eating, I was made a sandwich of cold roast beef and cilantro- shoots, roots, and all. At the time, I thought nothing of its frivolity. A mere sandwich made by my friend- that kid from Hong Kong- to quell the growls that surged up from inside us both. We were, in fact, on our way elsewhere to go eat, but wanted something, for whatever reason, until we made the trek in my unreliable, yet affordable and inherited, minivan. To me, at least at the time, and before I was forced by the big-wide-world to have any kind of culinary perspective, food had rules. Recipes and dishes were strict, natural, black and white things. Fusion did not exist. There was a reason I found my cilantro and beef sandwich boring, and that was because it wasn’t natural, as paradoxical as that sounds. Of course, there were a myriad of reasons why it was boring. I didn’t appreciate its flavours, and as a kid from a heritage of rich food, it tasted bland.

Now I reckon if I had eaten a sandwich from Givral Deli that very day I would have understood the transferability of food much differently. It would have been the sandwich that opened my eyes. And in a sense, it did the very same thing today. Ironically, sandwich shops to me today are dull, redundant things, overpriced and patronizing (again, ironically) with things like prepackaged cookies, potato chips, and whatever else. These are conveniences we are used to, and dare I say, doomed to depend on when we want a foot-long. Givral Deli, on the other hand, offers a great alternative with choices that have stood ground for a long, long time.

I won’t bother to tell you why you shouldn’t let the space conclude Givral’s quality, because so many of my foodie forefathers have already written about its green marbled vinyl floor, its green paint chipped walls, its long corridor leading out back, the charming boxes of eggs laid out in front of the counter and the loads of beauty creams behind it. The atmosphere is a pretense we’ve used too many times to judge the quality of a food hole. Let’s save such trivialities for the big cities where such dynamics matter, but not for Grival, please; because it need only depend on its unmatched fare, and even that may be an understatement.

You’d be foolish to never visit Grival Deli at least once, though with the price of a submarine sandwich being 3.25 at most I can’t see why you wouldn’t want to visit all the time. Even though it offers a mere nine sandwich options with a similar flavor base, I’m willing to bet you’re capable enough, food-wise, to fall in love with at least one choice. And if that’s not enough, it offers other Viet street options, like spring rolls and steamed buns bigger than my fist, stuffed with fixings like pork and mushrooms, made by the proud owner herself. If I hadn’t already ordered 5 of the most inexpensive submarines in the world moments before, I certainly would have opted for a bun or two. But now I have a reason to go back.

Though a tight menu, it runs a thoughtful selection. From sardines, to buttery barbeque pork in a special, ‘juicy,’ sauce. Each sandwich is filled accordingly with julienned marinated carrots, wedges of cucumber, red onions, and cilantro- stems and all. This was reason enough to understand those people in the past who’ve railed against the urbanity of putting lettuce in a sandwich, especially when there are so many other kinds of flavourful greens. It’s because of these Vietnamese staples that each sandwich is bright and uplifting, and brought down to earth by the hardy meats placed within, whether the sardine sub, stuffed with whole deboned smelts and flavoured in a simple and light mayonnaise that doesn’t overwhelm in the least, but balances it perfectly. Or whether the chicken teriyaki sub: slathered in an amber caramel coloured sauce that is sweet, salty, and smokey, sprinkled with heat from chopped chili peppers. My only qualm may be that the chicken teriyaki comes dangerously close to flavor with the chicken ‘satay’ sandwich. Then again, it’s understandable that my palette became muddled by five of nine sandwiches with similar fixings. But again, it’s this strong foundation, a signature of Vietnamese flavor, that builds such strong fare. And if you’re worrying about the bread, don’t. At first, I thought the crusty buns were too much to bear, having been spoiled by the soft buns of our conventional sandwich sellers; but after letting each warm hoagie mellow with its own stuffings, I was left with firm, chewable bites.

My sandwich of choice? The cured pork sausage sub. Wedges of pressed pork similar in nature to those cured European sausages we eat so often. Imparted with garlic and pepper notes, the meat gave the sandwich tongue tingling heat that contributed a dyanism to the sandwich’s vernal nature. I was reminded of the days I spent eating lunch with my old Thai employer, dipping deep fried pieces of the same stuff in ice melting chili sauce. That I spent my life so long without such a place is beyond me. And now, thanks to Grival Deli, I can afford, along with the most empty-handed of eaters, food that is not only affordable, but esculent. Culinary. Simply great food.

Givral Deli Vietnamese Subs

(519) 743-5558

203-301 King St E

Kitchener,ON

N2G 2L2

Mon 10-6

Tues 10-7

Sun 10-5

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Yulyeong

I haven’t been to Korean BBQ in a good number of years, though I’ve passed by it enough, watched the restaurants around it close and change, and remind myself why I’d probably never go back. But, with all that’s happened, it’s remained firmly rooted in this gastropolis waiting. Waiting for my inevitable return. Why do I speak so somberly? Why did I haphazardly promise myself never to go back? It certainly wasn’t because the place is bad. No, no. It is, as are most recollections of my pabulum past, full of nostalgic discomfort. Discomfort at the fact that I cannot recapture my past no matter how desperately I try, or have tried for that matter. Korean BBQ was the coveted Korean kitchen of my dear brother who almost always voted for it when he- not we- wanted to get Korean. To him, its lackluster appearance only spoke volumes of its legitimacy. To him, the rudeness of the help was invigorating; and the voice of the mother in the kitchen like a lullaby. Here, I learned, and to this day romanticize, that for a place to be good it has to be a little scary. And all these allegedly scary things became, like a butterfly’s dream, the paradise of my mind. But that was years ago, and I won’t do that to you today.

Korean BBQ’s father may be the most beleaguered cook I’ve ever come to know publically. For it was in his shop where my dear brother and I would go not thirty minutes before closing, be welcomed happily, and then ignored as soon as the clock struck nine. We took it as latent, aloof rudeness. Still, my dear brother always wanted to go at the same time. Classes finished when they finished, and I was a sucker. So, needless to say, I was almost always irritated.

That all changed today, because although I wouldn’t put it past papa BBQ to shoo me out at closing, I came with all the time in the world to eat (and hours before). That, and he seemed to do a good job of absolving himself of any guilt he may have incurred when I curmudgeonly chose to eat everything on the menu that had been crossed out, but which he happily came back and apologized for, asking me to choose something else. He blushed, I didn’t. He made suggestions, I asked for pallock remembering the days I could get a whole fish on a sizzling plate, and he suggested Korean pancakes instead. Memories.

The menu isn’t as workable as it used to be. I say this lamenting the loss of pallock. And the little seafood options that are left are a little wobbly. There is a squid fried rice which seems somewhat adventurous, but anything else seems reserved to the fishy flavor of a seafood broth and tiny little shrimp. Aside from that, the menu is riddled with familiar Korean fare, all of which I’ve had many times in the past- those familiar flavours of beef, pork, garlic, and chili. There are favourites: bibimbap, pork bone soup, udong noodles. This time I tried to get away from the classically popular, though I think that’s difficult in a food context. Always. Regardless, I took to something hearty, yet simple: a potato pancake with seafood (tiny shrimp); quite classic. And an otherwise mysterious dumpling soup, which I imagined as slices of rice cake in a spicy Kimchi broth.

I waited sentimentally, listening to the soft laughter of Korean BBQ’s mother as she made my pancake in the kitchen. The sea-foam walls, plastic flowers and old paper clippings taped to the wall and glorifying Koren BBQ’s heyday were a testament to the rootedness of Korean BBQ’s food and how it was as strong as its barley tea. My favourite of all places. Its intense roasted flavor was enough to make me forget I was drinking tea. Yes, even if the place has boiling grains down to a complacent art where the family just simply does what it’s done almost automatically for years, I don’t know it any better anywhere else than this.

A plate sized pancake (good enough as an appetizer for two) was placed in front of me, cut in slices and accompanied by a dark dipping sauce. The lack of egg in the humble batter of flour deserted it of all airiness and left it heavy and glutinous. If left alone, I’d have not enjoyed myself, but the dipping sauce washed the pancake of all that glutinous gunk. Its Fermented salt and vinegar flavor made my toes curl. I Loved it; either that or my thyroid was acting up.

My soup was a disheartening spectacle, but only because it wasn’t like I had dreamed. Placed in front of me was a bowl of dumplings immersed in a strong odorous seafood broth, but delicate enough on the palette, sprinkled with strips of seaweed paper. And to make the simple even more so it was dotted with pieces of scrambled egg. The more it soaked in itself, the richer it became. The dumplings, I concluded, were made by hand, tearing them open and finding pork mingling with translucent pieces of some kind of starchy noodle. And if they weren’t, they certainly tasted that way, the pork not tasting processed in the least, but earthy and savoury.

But I’ve been keeping the best from you, dear readers. The champions of Korean BBQ, indeed any Korean spot: the side dishes. Korean BBQ’s side dishes are my most loved: bean sprouts with a nutty roasted note, crisp and refreshing; Kimchi that’s calm and quenching with a hint of heat; an ambiguous fish sliced thinly and flavoured sweetly with a little spice; and potatoes, sweet and starchy, slathered in soy sauce and Korean cornstarch. They were dishes I could never forget, and with my meal a sobering reminder of why I came back.

Korean BBQ

(519) 568-7111

265 King Street East,

Kitchener, ON N2G 4N4

Cash and debit

Tues-Sat: 12-9

Sun-Mon: Closed

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Good for What Ails Some

It’s the kind of place people blow into to cure what ails them. Where meatheads regale the girls they take out for breakfast with stories about the worst hangovers of their lives. It’s the kind of place a young family comes to solidify some notion of kinship, community, safety, never expecting to hear someone swear like a sailor in the breakfast crowd. There are others: friends, the young, the old, the bourgeoisie, the proletariat. They all have their own reasons for coming. And of course, they all have a common reason for coming too, that being the food.

After regaling the locals with my own interest in the place, I was told it wasn’t as good as it used to be. That supple yearning for a sentimental past, it follows us everywhere, whether in fashion or food, whether on the barn exterior or log cabin interior of the place. Whether using carriage wheels for chandeliers or pitchforks for coat hangers (kind of clever, I know). So it goes. It’s what places do. Where would the business of food be if nothing mythologized the restaurant? Nothing would give me more joy than knowing that out there there are places that value the food alone. But alas, dear eaters, all of our outings to food locations must be imbued with culinary identity, the business must be appeased that way or cease to exist at all.

The Cedar Barn plays the part well. Known for its breakfast, known even more for its country bumpkin dining pretense, it’s a place where you can come and have a love affair with breakfast that you may or may not regret, depending on your standards.

The menu certainly made mince meat of any mirage the space may have created. It was a food slum. It had everything, a Smörgåsbord board of breakfast, lunch, and dinner- of pizza themed stuffs, chicken fingers, steaks, perch battered, of all seemingly urbane and out place things, in panko breadcrumbs. These were only a few of the things that made me raise an eyebrow at the good sized menu. I was less judgmental when it came to considering what was offered for breakfast. All a comfortable choice of options for a suspicious fee that had me ordering two separate plates: two pancakes for an easy 4 dollars and 15 cents, and a breakfast plate of eggs, toast, hash browns and sausage for a price so low my otherwise miserly mind, maybe for the first time in a long time, forgot about it.

Now, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that in every hashhouse, breakfast is a thought provoking paradigmatic process. We order a choice on the menu and the wait staff, provided it has the finesse, guides us through the syntagm that is our order. We order eggs, they ask: how cooked? We order toast, they say: how burnt? What kind of bread? The Cedar Barn is no exception. Now, the only struggle that comes from ordering might be in the volume one’s forced to speak at because The Barn is a loud place, especially on a late Sunday morning. So, if you don’t speak with a little fervency, there’s a chance you ask for onions on your hash browns and instead get green peppers. So again, a heads up. Speak up, or wait a long while before you replace any creamers, coffee, or even cutlery.

My pancakes taught me a valuable lesson too. Don’t be so quick to judge. The enormous portion made me question where I had eaten in the past and made me conclude that such a cheap price was made for a small quantity. Quality is another story. The pancakes had everything I could have reasonably expected. Dense in volume, but fluffy in appearance. Sweetly flavoured and cooked through. I tolerated the dry caliber of the things because I knew the point was to absorb every ounce of syrup I poured over them. Still, I would have preferred fluffy and dry, because when it comes to making something that’s dense also moist, it takes a steady mind to eat. Food goes down thick and gluey. Either way, went down it did.

The customary nature of my second dish made it hard to get excited. I did my best to exalt it to some position of good eating, like asking for dark rye bread instead of white, demanding the fabled farmer’s sausage (a specialty of the house, I was told), but eggs and bacon and the like are never a surprising device of gastronomica- not for breakfast. It’s comfort food, tried, tested, and true. If a place can’t cook eggs, even the humblest eaters deny the cook the slightest of nods. It’s a harsh thing to say my food could have used some salt, because the Barn does this with, I assume, good reason, and that is to appease all taste buds. On the other hand, it is easy to take such an act as a lack of confidence in a place’s own food, but I’ll leave it at that. My hash browns had enough bite, but weren’t nearly as well done as I would have liked them to be. If I learned anything from The Cedar Barn however, it was that the cooks in the kitchen, at least at breakfast, were only extensions of every customer’s hands, because it is up to us to tell them exactly how we like it. That may be the place’s one redeeming quality. It certainly wasn’t the sausage, a saltless banger boiled first and then grilled second to save time and pull the culinary wool over diners’ eyes. Does it work? Not in the slightest. The meat, a dull grey, was drained of all savoury flavour and tasted unbearably off.

I could have easily filled my stomach, especially with the inexpensive portions, only the food couldn’t keep me interested long enough. Then again, it was only breakfast.

The Cedar Barn

(519) 664-2569

1217 Lobsinger Rd
Waterloo, ON N2J 4G8

Open early, e’ry day.

Any payment

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